Questions for Brian Sonntag, Tacoma Rescue Mission CFO and former state auditor

For 20 years, lifelong Tacoma resident Brian Sonntag scoured the budgets of government agencies as state auditor, uncovering the good, the bad and the ugly in budgets large and small. He retired from state office in January, having held public positions since being elected Pierce County clerk in 1978, at the age of 26. Sonntag is now chief financial officer at the nonprofit Tacoma Rescue Mission.

What drew you to public office? I kind of grew up with it, which means at a young age I wasn’t afraid to run for a countywide office. My dad had been in elected office, county auditor for 22 years, and he died when I was in high school. The thought of public service, elected office, was not a foreign concept. I was elected Pierce County clerk when I was 26 years old in 1978.

What were some of the most common problems you saw as auditor? There are some common threads that we find in any fraud or any internal problem, and those are lack of internal controls — checks and balances over what people do and segregation of duties. You’ll often find if there’s a fraud or a theft, it’s from one person who’s been an employee for a really long time, very trusted. They also never go on vacation. Once they get sick or go on vacation and someone fills in, questions get asked.

What was the worst waste of money you uncovered? We ran into contracting issues with the Department of Transportation where there would be very little oversight, if any, over change orders. One example we had of a Department of Transportation contracting issue was a widening project on Highway 18. It was a 5-mile stretch, and I think the original bid was about $55 million. The actual cost wound up closer to $100 million, and there were 156 change orders to that project that were approved (but) never really reviewed independently or properly.

What advice do you have for those running households, and what should they watch out for? Same things. At home, if you were paving a driveway or putting a roof on and somebody said it was going to cost more than the original bid, you would ask some very detailed questions: Why is that? Here’s what you bid, why can’t you do it for the bid price? And they’d be able to explain that. In government, sometimes they forget whose money it is they’re responsible for and whose work they’re doing.

So what government agency was run the most efficiently? At the state level, a couple of departments come to mind, maybe one more than any other would be the Washington State Patrol. It could be because it’s a formal, militaristic type of operation, but it’s more than that. They really care about their level of public service, being accountable. From an auditor’s standpoint, they were great to work with. Chief (John) Batiste, the leadership from the top down, was evident.

What was the problem with Seattle Public Schools? It’s a huge public school district with decentralized operations. They have buildings and administrators all over the city, and, for those reasons, it’s going to be tough to manage well. But they’ve gotten into some other problems as well. And you can lead back to lack of oversight, supervision, accountability, the issues with Silas Potter (who in April pleaded guilty to 36 counts of theft), and they continue. The same kinds of issues are with the Seattle School District as anyone else, just bigger. It’s more money and more decentralized.

You’ve likely made a number of people angry doing your line of work. Did you ever receive any threats? That first office I held as Pierce County clerk, 1978, that was the year of the Pierce County racketeering scandal. Three weeks after my countywide election, I’m watching the evening news and all of the sudden … there was the county sheriff in handcuffs and they were talking about indicting the county prosecutor. Because a lot of the information that led to some of these folks going to jail was actually kept in the financial and court records that we had in the clerk’s office, I did receive a lot of phone calls and threats at that time. And what I got for threats being an auditor paled (by comparison).

So what were some of those more serious threats? “Better be careful, better have someone start your car for you … Are you aware of who you’re dealing with, who these folks are?” You know, Mel Journey, who was the liquor board inspector at the time, was shot down in a driveway getting into his car to leave for work in the morning here in Tacoma. He lived, but those things were happening. Some people say I was too young to know any better, and maybe I was.

So why the Tacoma Rescue Mission? A couple of reasons. One, my wife has been an employee there for six years. I’ve learned a lot more about the mission in that time than before, even living here my whole life. And, I thought, what an opportunity to really continue public service in a very direct way.

How is it going? From the personal standpoint, I’m the personification of a fish out of water. I’m the old dog learning new tricks. My title is CFO. I’m not sure yet what all that will entail. I’ve never been one before.

How are you incorporating your experience as auditor? Any dollars we save in administrative costs are dollars that are going to go right out to direct services. The guy who runs our kitchen does a super job. He has the cost of a meal down to 42 cents. So, if I can identify $10,000 to save some place, that’s more than 22,000 meals, so I’ve got incentive.